A pediatric colleague once said, “We can invest in early childhood or we can build more prisons 20 years later at a much greater cost to society.”
A bill, presently before the state Legislature (HB 628), is a plan for an Employer Based Insurance Program to provide “paid family leave.” I believe this is an opportunity to invest in early childhood in order to create a healthier, more productive and caring society.
Barry Brazelton, now a 95-year-old Boston pediatrician and researcher, established a half-century ago how critical newborn bonding is for the baby and the parents. The development of “attachment” from the start of life, profoundly affects the relationship between the child and his or her new parents.
It follows that the first few years, even the first few months, of life lasts forever. We have a compelling biologic model of why kids who have experienced the toxic stress of neglect – the absence of love, as simple as cuddling – have trouble learning. A Harvard pediatrician, Jack Shonkoff, states simply, “We can modify behavior late, but we can’t rewire disrupted brain circuits.”
Years ago, I remember seeing the MRI scans of the brains of children who were completely neglected in an Eastern European orphanage. There were large areas of atrophy (no brain tissue), which had resulted from a lack of love and stimulation of these children early in their lives.
As obstetricians, we see new moms routinely for their postpartum visits six weeks after the delivery of their babies. Most are just learning how to be a parent. Their bodies are still healing, while they are torn between the challenges of being a new mom and returning to the demands of an old job.
I realized early in my career that we could devote ourselves to delivering healthy babies, but it would mean nothing if we did not care for the mom and newborn when we sent them home from the hospital. Those of us who have children know that no matter how well-educated or how well-motivated, the experience of having a first child at times can be overwhelming.
Babies are not born with instructions. We all want to be good parents, but not all of us have had good modeling, and not all of us have the resources to be the parents we want to be.
Many new moms are single today with no support. Grandparents work and they often live elsewhere. In my lifetime neighborhoods have changed. There is no longer a woman down the street who has had six kids and welcomes the opportunity to help a new mom as she was once helped. For these reasons, 20 years ago, we established the Healthy Beginnings Endowment at Concord Hospital, raising $1.3 million to award grants annually to Concord area programs that support and educate new parents.
Physicians have been the most generous donors to this endowment because they understand the wisdom of investing in early childhood to prevent adult problems. The upshot is that children who are undermined early are much more likely in later years to suffer mental illness, heart disease, obesity, diabetes and other physical ailments.
The bill before us, HB 628, would give time and financial support at very little cost, to permit new parents to establish an attachment to their baby that would pay dividends over the lifetime of their child. We are one of the few developed countries in the world that does not provide this benefit to new parents.
In England, my daughter-in-law was given nine months of paid maternity leave when she had our granddaughter. In France, our former exchange student was awarded six months of paid leave, as was her husband, following the birth of each of their three children. In Germany, a close friend’a daughter had one year of paid maternity leave and her husband three months after their first baby. It should not surprise us that the people of those countries are healthier and live longer than us (even though Europeans drink and smoke more than us). And, remarkably their health care costs amount to half of what we spend per person in this country.
The implication is that the most cost-effective window to bring about change in the health and welfare of a country isn’t high school or even kindergarten. It is the early childhood years, and it can be done at a relatively low cost, when compared to the later financial burden of adult health care.
Presently, we have a ravaging substance abuse crisis into which we are pouring millions of dollars to treat and rehabilitate those afflicted. It seems, almost every week, we read in the Concord Monitor about another young person whose life has been lost to overdose. Is there a better example today that an “ounce of prevention would save pounds of cure”?
If we are to have healthy, responsible, kind adults – young people who choose not to abuse themselves or others – we must first create kids with a deep sense of self worth, a strong respect for themselves and others. Adults who love well have been children who were well-loved. Adults who care deeply about others and our world were children who were deeply cared for.
The crucial value of “paid family leave” is that it would it would provide parents to start their child on the path to a successful adulthood.
I recently read the book Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss and Hope in an African Slum. The author, Kennedy Odede, overcame a late childhood fraught with constant hunger, complete poverty and physical abuse. He writes, “As a young child, I knew how much my mother loved me. When I was on the streets, I thought of what my mom had told me, that no matter where I was in the world, if I could see the stars, I should know that she could see them, too, and I felt her love always.”
Kennedy Odede is an adult now, who has returned to his impoverished Nairobi slum and created a school for girls and a community organization called Shining Hope for Communities. In spite of a cruel childhood, except for his first three years of life, he has become a successful, productive, happy adult who is devoted to improving his old neighborhood, his world. Paid family leave is fundamental to a healthy society because it provides the framework for a precious, priceless early childhood – the foundation on which responsible, loving adults grow. For those of you who believe we cannot afford paid family leave, I would argue that we can’t afford not to provide paid family leave. The future of our society surely rests on this wise investment.
(Dr. Oglesby H. Young lives in Concord.)